China is currently the best country in the world for renewable energy investment, while India has the strongest potential for conventional power investors, according to a new report. Published by analysts at PA Consulting, ‘Mapping Energy Investment Potential Around the World’ ranks 30 countries against several criteria to determine where the best internal rate of return can be found. China tops the renewable league table, followed by Sweden and Denmark. The top ten also includes the Philippines and Brazil while the U.S. is way down the list in 28th place. The report covers 16 countries in Europe; Dubai, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East; Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Singapore in the Asia-Pacific; the five BRICS nations and the U.S. The analysis examines seven renewable technologies: solar photovoltaic, concentrated solar power, onshore and offshore wind, hydro, geothermal and biomass and looks at four conventional technologies: nuclear, combined cycle gas turbine, gas turbine and coal.

Pakistan encapsulates the renewable energy challenge faced by many developing and emerging countries. Despite abundant renewable resources – including solar, wind, hydropower and biomass – very little of this potential has been utilized. At the same time, about a third of the country’s people do not have access to electricity.Pakistan has ambitious plans for solar and wind projects, and has developed a comprehensive policy framework for renewable energy, but projects on the ground remain few and far between. What accounts for this gap? “One major reason is a lack of credible resource data,” says Arif Alauddin, the former CEO of Pakistan’s Alternative Energy Development Board, and now Managing Director of the National Energy Conservation Center. While high-level solar and wind maps are widely available, these do not contain the granular data required by governments to understand the country’s full resource potential and needed by the private sector to identify specific sites for development. To address this challenge, Pakistan and eight other countries are joining with the World Bank in a new Renewable Energy Mapping Program (REMAP) to carry out mapping of renewable energy resources that will for the first time produce rich, nationwide data for each country. Coordinated and financed by the World Bank’s Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP), the initiative will cover mapping of solar, wind, biomass, and small hydropower potential. “The importance of this resource mapping [for Pakistan] cannot be overstated,” says Arif Alauddin. “The country’s energy shortage is unprecedented, tariffs are going up, and petroleum imports are eating up a large share of export earnings. There is a need to shift to domestic renewable energy resources.”

More than one billion people in the world don’t have access to electricity, and renewable energy accounts for 18 percent of the global energy mix, according to a report from the World Bank and supported by the World Energy Council.The report is compiled by experts from 15 agencies and is the first to monitor progress towards the three objectives of the Sustainable Energy for All initiative, launched in 2011 by the United Nations. The objectives are universal access, doubled renewables and doubled energy efficiencies programs.The report also said that 2.8 billion people use wood or other biomass to cook and heat their homes, and to bring electricity to the more than one billion people using conventional energy sources would increase global carbon dioxide emissions by less than one percent. Results show that 20 countries in Asia and Africa account for two-thirds of those without access to electricity, and 75 percent of those use solid fuels-wood, charcoal, animal and crop waste and coal to cook or heat their homes. The improvement rate of energy efficiency, described by a compound annual growth rate of energy intensity, was -1.3 percent between 1990 and 2010.The report says countries, international organizations and private investors must increase investments by at least $600 billion a year until 2030, including $45 billion for electricity expansion, $4.4 billion on modern cooking, $394 billion in energy efficiency and $174 billion on renewable energy.To read the full report, click here.

CHINA – According to the China Wind Energy Association (CWEA), wind energy capacity has now surpassed nuclear power to become the third largest source of electricity in China, after coal, and large-scale hydro-electric plants. In 2012 alone, wind energy generated an estimated 100.4 billion kilowatt hours, an increase of 0.5% from the years before, and a total of 2% more energy than was generated by nuclear power plants. The gap between the amount of energy generated by the two is likely to grow in the future, given China’s ambitious plans for wind energy, and the major cutbacks in nuclear following the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.

Wind energy capacity has grown rapidly over the years, fueled by ambitious renewable energy targets, and strong government support of wind energy manufacturers. By the end of 2012 China had 60.83 GW of installed capacity, and targets aim to see a total of 100 GW by the end of 2015. However, some barriers do exist to wind energy’s future growth. According to Meng Xian’gan, the secretary general of the China Renewable Energy Society, “grid companies lack economic incentives to take in more wind power, as government-dictated on-grid wholesale prices of wind power are higher than those of thermal power.” The only way to overcome this barrier is for a government-led market reform aimed at addressing the problem.